When
you spend the time to meditate on the things you can be thankful for in
your life, then you begin to appreciate that your life is truly a
precious opportunity.
Saturday, July 10, 2021
Friday, July 9, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // MINOR WHITE
1908 -
MINOR WHITE was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator born on this date (d: 1976). He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies. Starting in Oregon in 1937 and continuing until he died in 1976, White made thousands of black-and-white and color photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter, created with both technical mastery and a strong visual sense of light and shadow. He taught many classes, workshops, and retreats on photography at the California School of Fine Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other schools, and in his own home. He lived much of his life as a closeted gay man, afraid to express himself publicly for fear of loss of his teaching jobs, and some of his most compelling images are figure studies of men whom he taught or with whom he had relationships. He helped start, and for many years was editor of, the photography magazine Aperture. After his death in 1976, White was hailed as one of America's greatest photographers.
White took up photography while very young but set it aside for a number of years to study botany and, later, poetry. He began to photograph seriously in 1937. His early years as a photographer were spent working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Portland, Ore. Many WPA photographers were chiefly concerned with documentation; White, however, preferred a more personal approach. Several of his photographs were included in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1941.
White served in the U.S. Army during WWII, and in 1945 he moved to New York City, where he became part of a circle of friends that included the influential photographers Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz His contact with Stieglitz helped him discover his own distinctive style. From Stieglitz he learned the expressive potential of the sequence, a group of photographs presented as a unit. White would present his work in such units along with text, creating arrangements that he hoped would inspire different moods, emotions, and associations in the viewer, moving beyond the conventional expressive possibilities of still photography. White also learned from Stieglitz the idea of the “equivalent,” or a photographic image intended as a visual metaphor for a state of being. Both in his photographs and in his writing, White became the foremost exponent of the sequence and the equivalent.
White was greatly influenced by Stieglitz's concept of "equivalence," which White interpreted as allowing photographs to represent more than their subject matter. He wrote "when a photograph functions as an Equivalent, the photograph is at once a record of something in front of the camera and simultaneously a spontaneous symbol. (A 'spontaneous symbol' is one which develops automatically to fill the need of the moment. A photograph of the bark of a tree, for example, may suddenly touch off a corresponding feeling of roughness of character within an individual.)"
In his later life he often made photographs of rocks, surf, wood and other natural objects that were isolated from their context, so that they became abstract forms. He intended these to be interpreted by the viewer as something more than what they actually present. According to White, "When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is telling us in effect, 'I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor of that feeling.'...What really happened is that he recognized an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself.
Among his best-known books are two collections, Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations (1969), which features some of his sequences, and Minor White: Rites and Passages (1978), with excerpts from his diaries and letters and a biographical essay by James Baker Hall.
From 1965 to 1974 White taught photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. In 1968 he photographed in Maine and Vermont, United States and Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1973-1974 White photographed in Lima, Peru and Europe. He died June 24, 1976.
For an excellent discussion of White's sexuality and its influence on his art click here: https://aperture.org/blog/
Via Daily Dharma: Steps that Radiate Harmony
When we walk in forgetfulness, we imprint our anxieties and sorrows on Mother Earth and on those around us. But when we walk in mindfulness, each step creates a fresh breeze of peace, joy, and harmony.
—Nguyen Anh-Huong and Thich Nhat Hanh,
“Walking Meditation—Anywhere”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Thursday, July 8, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Working with Pain
If
we are truly aware of the sensations, we find that pain can focus and
calm the mind. There can be a joy that arises with this concentration.
We are not scattered. The mind is happily focused.
Via White Crane Insitute -- FRED HOLLAND DAY
This Day in Gay History
July 08
Born
1864 -
FRED HOLLAND DAY American photographer and publisher, born (d: 1933). He was considered by many to be the first in the U.S.A. to advocate that photography should be considered a fine art. Day's life and works had long been controversial, since his photographic subjects were often nude male youths. Pam Roberts, in F. Holland Day (Waanders Pub, 2001; catalog of a Day exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum) writes: "Day never married and his sexual orientation, whilst it is widely assumed that he was homosexual, because of his interests, his photographic subject matter, his general flamboyant demeanor, was, like much else about him, a very private matter." At the turn of the century, his influence and reputation as a photographer rivaled that of Alfred Stieglitz, who later eclipsed him.
The high point of Day's photographic career was probably his organization of an exhibition of photographs at the Royal Photographic Society in 1900. He was a major patron of Aubrey Beardsley. Now that the attitudes toward homosexuality have changed so radically, since the 1990s Day's works have been included in major exhibitions by museum curators, notably in the solo Day retrospective at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2000/2001 and similar shows at the Royal Photographic Society in England and the Fuller Museum of Art.
Art historians are once again taking an interest in Day, and there are now significant academic texts on Day's homoerotic portraiture, and its similarities to the work of Walter Pater and Thomas Eakins.
Via Daily Dharma: Letting Your Feelings Flow
When
we open to our feelings as they arise, we create the causes and
conditions of mental and physical health. This is what acceptance-based
inner awareness entails; it is not a practice to put off, any more than
breathing, sleeping, or consuming nourishment.
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Via Tricycle // Ethical Conduct
Pocket Paramis: Ethical Conduct
By The Editors
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Via Daily Dharma: Balancing Discipline with Joy
Without
spiritual discipline we are never going to wake up or advance on our
journey through this life. But our discipline must be wedded to joy, and
we must find pleasure in the myriad wonders that this life offers.
Monday, July 5, 2021
Buddhism and the Real World
By Donald S. Lopez Jr.
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Via Daily Dharma: You Are the Light
You
are the light, with your ability to be conscious and mindful, and to
act with wisdom and foresight. To serve the light means to show up for
yourself, as your best and highest self, and to show up for others in
your life as well.
—Dawa Tarchin Phillips, “What to Do When You Don’t Know What’s Next”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Sunday, July 4, 2021
Via Revista Bodisatva // Lama Padma Samten
“A riqueza não monetária é muito interessante, porque ela pode quantificar o que perdemos na nossa vida quando nos ligamos à economia monetária, quando trocamos os parâmetros de qualidade de vida, sustentabilidade e sanidade do ambiente. Trocamos isso por uma aparente vantagem da riqueza monetária, mas na verdade estamos empobrecendo, ficando mais vulneráveis e mais infelizes.
Se olharmos, por exemplo, o que acontece quando ficamos presos a esse percurso da sociedade ligado à economia monetária, vamos entender que há um sofrimento muito amplo, que surge de algum modo ligado a coisas econômicas, mas que vai impactando também outras formas de funcionamento da própria sociedade. Quando a pessoa mergulha na visão do paradigma econômico monetário, é quase impossível entender a visão ecológica. Surge também uma sensação de que não há limites para esse crescimento econômico.
Quando começamos a estabelecer um tipo de sociedade, não conseguimos incorporar a visão de equilíbrio entre as múltiplas espécies e de limitação da atividade humana. Não perseguimos riqueza, nós passamos a perseguir números, como se fosse um jogo, e então a visão ecológica perde o sentido. Eu preciso atravessar a vida dos outros seres, preciso avançar sobre a liberdade dos outros seres para ampliar esses números.”
— Lama Padma Samten apresentando uma economia desde a visão budista na seção Palavras do Lama, na Revista Bodisatva 33.
Via White Crane Institute // WALT WHITMAN published the first edition of Leaves of Grass
Noteworthy
1855 -
On this day in 1855, WALT WHITMAN published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The first edition consisted of twelve poems, and was published anonymously; Whitman set much of the type himself, and paid for its printing. Over his lifetime, he published eight more editions, adding poems each time; there were 122 new poems in the third edition alone (1860-61), and the final "death-bed edition," published in 1891, contained almost 400. The first edition received several glowing — and anonymous — reviews in New York newspapers. Most of them were written by Whitman himself.
The praise was unstinting: "An American bard at last!" One legitimate mention by popular columnist Fanny Fern called the collection daring and fresh. Emerson felt it was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." This wasn't a universal opinion, however; many called it filth, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy into the fire.
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